Tess of the d'Urbervilles eBook

“Indeed, then, I shall not fight!” said
the latter majestically; “and if I had know
you was of that sort, I wouldn’t have so let
myself down as to come with such a whorage as this
is!”

The rather too inclusive speech brought down a torrent
of vituperation from other quarters upon fair Tess’s
unlucky head, particularly from the Queen of Diamonds,
who having stood in the relations to d’Urberville
that Car had also been suspected of, united with the
latter against the common enemy. Several other
women also chimed in, with an animus which none of
them would have been so fatuous as to show but for
the rollicking evening they had passed. Thereupon,
finding Tess unfairly browbeaten, the husbands and
lovers tried to make peace by defending her; but the
result of that attempt was directly to increase the
war.

Tess was indignant and ashamed. She no longer
minded the loneliness of the way and the lateness
of the hour; her one object was to get away from the
whole crew as soon as possible. She knew well
enough that the better among them would repent of
their passion next day. They were all now inside
the field, and she was edging back to rush off alone
when a horseman emerged almost silently from the corner
of the hedge that screened the road, and Alec d’Urberville
looked round upon them.

“What the devil is all this row about, work-folk?”
he asked.

The explanation was not readily forthcoming; and,
in truth, he did not require any. Having heard
their voices while yet some way off he had ridden
creepingly forward, and learnt enough to satisfy himself.

Tess was standing apart from the rest, near the gate.
He bent over towards her. “Jump up behind
me,” he whispered, “and we’ll get
shot of the screaming cats in a jiffy!”

She felt almost ready to faint, so vivid was her sense
of the crisis. At almost any other moment of
her life she would have refused such proffered aid
and company, as she had refused them several times
before; and now the loneliness would not of itself
have forced her to do otherwise. But coming
as the invitation did at the particular juncture when
fear and indignation at these adversaries could be
transformed by a spring of the foot into a triumph
over them, she abandoned herself to her impulse, climbed
the gate, put her toe upon his instep, and scrambled
into the saddle behind him. The pair were speeding
away into the distant gray by the time that the contentious
revellers became aware of what had happened.

The Queen of Spades forgot the stain on her bodice,
and stood beside the Queen of Diamonds and the new-married,
staggering young woman—­all with a gaze
of fixity in the direction in which the horse’s
tramp was diminishing into silence on the road.

“What be ye looking at?” asked a man who
had not observed the incident.

“Ho-ho-ho!” laughed dark Car.

“Hee-hee-hee!” laughed the tippling bride,
as she steadied herself on the arm of her fond husband.